120 Million
Number of hectares of farmland in China. “China has a huge surface dedicated to agriculture — 120 million hectares. This is twice the size of Brazil or Russia, so this is a huge agricultural market. For a company like Syngenta, dedicated entirely to agriculture, China is not only a big market but a big growing market.” — Pierre Cohadon, territory head for Syngenta China
Twenty-Five
Years the Independent Professional Seed Association has been operating. “IPSA is a segment of the industry that has seen tremendous change in 25 years. During the past five to 10 years, the market further consolidated. If you reach back 15 to 20 years, the advent of biotech significantly impacted the industry. Those are substantial changes that have changed the face of the industry. They’ve changed the number of participants and who those players are. I think as you get to the end of the day, the big change for IPSA members revolves around accessing the inputs they rely on to run their business.” — Greg Ruehle, IPSA chief executive officer
27
Number of products that Neil Bentley, BASF director of marketing for the U.S. Crop division, says the company launched from 2000 to 2012. “Typically, the BASF sales rep has done a great job of understanding the products that BASF offers in to the marketplace. However, the innovation specialists really bring the other side of the coin; they bring the agronomic skills. We launched 27 products from 2000 to 2012 and we’re going to launch another 37 products until the end of the decade. We need not only people who can come to the table and understand the products that BASF is launching into the marketplace, but also really speak with that farmer and place them agronomically to where they are going to have the maximum impact each and every day.”
1,500-2,300
Number of seed dealers that STEP, a company that facilitates stewardship education programs for the seed industry, will reach in its latest program for Monsanto. “Typically, we try and see in the range of 1,500 to 2,300 dealers. The geography we hit depends on what the hot items are — IRM refuge being one of them. There’s a lot of integrated product out there now, so down in the cotton growing area they’ve got more refuge requirements and a little bit more of a need for RIM compliance education. But also with the expiration of the Roundup Ready patent, we’re focused on the high soybean producing states this year, as well. So we will be focusing on both the cotton region and those high producing soybean states.” — Marty Turner, STEP, Ltd. director of stewardship and compliance
4
Number of business platforms that JanWillem Breukink, senior executive member of the board, INCOTEC Group BV, says the company offers. “For us, our three business platforms — field crops, vegetables and ornamentals — are equally important. Vegetables are the high-tech market where we learn a lot, where we can get more out of the seed and where we develop technology that can later be used in the field crops. But if you look at the size of the market, of course field crops has enormous potential because the size of the market is much bigger. We nourish all three business areas as much as possible to make sure all the segments remain successful. [Our fourth platform] is analytical services, which is extremely important in supporting our technologies. Analytical services performs all kinds of tests on seeds, like dust off and genetic testing. We have a deal with Keygene where we allow high-tech DNA analysis to be made available to smaller seed companies. There is a lot of interest in these technologies.”
200 Million
Number of farms in China. “China has 120 million hectares but that’s also 200 million farms and probably 600 million farmers. There are a large number of smallholders in China, and empowering them, making sure they can produce more, is very important.” — Pierre Cohadon, territory head for Syngenta China
